Welcome to our program. Today
I'll be preaching from the book of Ephesians, chapter 5. I'll
begin in verse 8, where we pick up there when the Apostle Paul
is describing what it is to live as a Christian. The title of
this message is Children of Light, and certainly those who live
as Christians are to live as children of light. But now this
is the issue of the grace of God revealed in the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ, that sinners are saved by grace, but not only
are they saved by grace, but we who are saved live our lives
by the grace of God. Many people may have an idea
or some sort of notion that a sinner is saved by grace and then he
preserves or keeps himself by his own power. But that's not
the case when it comes to Christianity, true Christianity. That's a false
form of Christianity. But true Christianity is grace
all the way. Saved by grace, kept by grace,
ultimately glorified by grace. Now the Bible teaches that grace
reigns or rules through righteousness. And that righteousness is not
the righteousness of the sinner saved by grace. It's the righteousness
of the sinner's Savior who saved him by grace, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And He is the sovereign Savior.
He is the Lord our righteousness. But the Apostle Paul picks up
here in verse 8, speaking to the believers at the church in
Ephesus, he says, For you were sometimes darkness, but now Now
that you've been saved by grace, now are you light in the Lord. Now walk as children of light. Now that's pretty simple instruction
if you understand grace, if you understand what light is. He
starts out by reminding them what they were before they were
born again by the Spirit, before they came to a saving knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. What were they? You were darkness.
Now what is that darkness? Well, that darkness is the darkness
of an unregenerate person, an unbeliever, one who does not
know the Lord, one who does not trust the Lord Jesus Christ and
rest in His finished work at Calvary for all of salvation,
one who does not love Christ. It's the darkness of ignorance. They don't really know what it
is to be saved. They really don't know their
need of salvation. A person who goes through this
life without seeing the need to turn to Christ for all of
salvation and to trust Him and follow Him is a person who is
in darkness, ignorant. He's ignorant of the true nature
of God. God is holy. God is just and
righteous. He must punish sin. You see,
one day you will stand before a holy God and you must give
an account. And the Bible teaches that the
division of judgment will rest upon one thing. Are you in Christ
or are you not? If you're not in Christ, if you're
not represented by the Lord Jesus Christ, if He's not your substitute
who died for your sins on the cross of Calvary and redeemed
you from your sins, drank damnation dry, if you stand before God
without having been washed in the blood of Christ from all
your sins, without having been clothed in His righteousness
for your entire and complete justification before God. If
you stand before God without Christ, then you will be condemned
forever, perishing. That's what the Scripture says,
they're perishing. And they're in darkness now because
they don't realize that God is so holy that He cannot save you,
He cannot bless you, He cannot bring you into His presence or
into heaven based upon your best efforts to keep His law, because
your best efforts are not good enough. That's why salvation
is by grace. If what you and I could do would
be good enough to get to heaven, we would need Christ. And that's
exactly what a sinner is saying when he's trying to work his
way into God's favor, work his way to heaven. He's essentially
saying he doesn't need Christ. He's denying Christ. That's unbelief.
That's the darkness of self-righteousness. So, those who do not know Christ
are in darkness. Now, it is essential, in order
for sinners to be saved, that they come to the light. Now,
what is this light? Well, this light is the Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, first and foremost. John the Baptist, the
forerunner of Christ, the last of the Old Testament prophets,
described Christ as the light of the world. He is light. And
light means holiness, light means purity, but light also means
truth. And Christ said, I am the way,
I am the truth, I am the light. So now those who are in darkness,
they're ignorant of God, but now they're also ignorant of
themselves. It's like this. We all know people
who have gone to the doctor for checkups. And they found out
that they had some dreaded disease, such as cancer, or some kind
of a disease like that, that they did not know they had. And
that's the way it is with all men by nature, before they become
children of light, before they come to a saving knowledge of
Christ. You have a dreaded disease, a deadly disease, a soul-damning
disease, and you don't know it. And that dreaded disease is the
disease of sin. Now somebody may say, well, I
know I'm a sinner, but do you know the extent of your sin?
My friend, if you're not trusting Christ and Him alone and His
finished work on the cross for all of salvation, you don't know,
you may say, well, I'm not perfect. You may say, I know I'm a sinner,
but you don't really know how, you don't know the extent and
the deadliness and the seriousness of your disease. Paul wrote that
in Romans chapter 7. He spoke of his life before God
revealed himself to Paul. And he said, I had not known
sin but by the law. But he said, when the commandment
came, when God showed him the extent of the law, he said, sin
revived and I died. I saw how much of a sinner I
was and am. You see, man by nature in Adam
is so sinful that even our best efforts to obey the law are an
abomination unto God. Scripture says in Luke chapter
16 and verse 15, that which is highly esteemed among men is
an abomination unto God. Well, what is highly esteemed
among men? Religion, morality. Now, there's
nothing wrong with morality in and of itself. We all ought to
be moral people. But what we have to understand
by way of knowledge from God is that our best efforts at morality
cannot save us. The Bible teaches that by deeds
of law shall no flesh be justified, declared righteous, in the sight
of God. So this darkness is the darkness
of ignorance of our true state as depraved sinners who cannot
save ourselves, who cannot make ourselves righteous by our best
efforts a whole life of efforts to obey the law would not make
us righteous. Next, the person who is in this
darkness is ignorant of God's one way of salvation, and that
is in the light of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is life. He is the
way of salvation. And that way of salvation includes
who He is, the glory of His person. Christ is God and He is man without
sin. He's God and man in one person.
Which means this, it means that he is able to save his people
to the uttermost. Any sinner who comes to God through
Christ, any sinner who comes to the mercy seat, resting in
Christ, begging for mercy, shall be saved. Because why? Because
Christ is able. And then he's willing to save
his people from their sins. The Bible says in John chapter
13 and verse 1 that he loved his own, his own people, his
sheep, he called them in John 10, to the end. That means he
loved them to the finishing of the work. And the work that he
had to do was to obey the law perfectly in their stead and
to go to the cross of Calvary under their sins, charged to
him. and suffer and bleed and die
on that cross as payment to the justice of God for their sins.
That's our only hope. The Bible says Christ came into
the world to save sinners. He died for them. That's what
sin demands. And when the sins of his sheep
were charged to him, he had to die. That was his one offering. that brought about the full payment,
the full redemption, and the establishment of righteousness
which ensures the salvation of all his people. Now, don't remain
ignorant of the glory and the holiness of God. Don't remain
ignorant of your own sinfulness and your depravity and your inability.
and certainly don't remain ignorant of the glory of Christ and Him
crucified, His finished work, His blood, and His righteousness
imputed for all of our salvation. Now Paul says that's what you
were. You were in darkness. Now some people are in the darkness
of lawlessness and immorality, open rebels against anything
religious, anything in society, anything that has anything to
do with God. But other people are ignorant and blind in their
religion. And so either way, without Christ,
we're nothing. That's the point. Now he says
in verse 8, For you were sometime darkness, but now. Now the now
here refers to the present of their lives having been born
again by the Spirit of God. Christ told Nicodemus, you must
be born again. He's speaking to you, he's speaking
to me. In other words, in order for us to get out of that darkness
and to come to the light of the knowledge of the glory of God
in Christ, we must be born again. Now, why is that so? Well, by
nature, as we're born into this world in Adam, we're fallen men
and women. We're sinful, depraved, spiritually
dead. Now, we have physical eyes by
which we can see things in this world. But by nature, without
being born again, Without the grace of God, we have no spiritual
eyes. We cannot see the glory of the
spiritual things of salvation, the spiritual things of God in
Christ. And so we must be born again.
We must be given spiritual eyes so that we can see things spiritually
that we couldn't see before. And that's why the Lord told
His disciples when they looked to Him and when they confessed
Him to be the Messiah, He said, blessed are your eyes for they
see. By the same token, we must be
given spiritual ears to hear. When we're born physically, we
have physical ears by which we can hear the things of the world,
the sounds of the earth. But you see, when we're born
again, the Holy Spirit from Christ gives us spiritual ears so that
we can hear things that we didn't hear before. Now basically what
that means is this. When you hear the gospel, the
good news, the jubilee trumpet, as the Old Testament put it in
some cases, when you hear that joyful sound, it means something
to you. It's life and death. It's like
this, if you went to the doctor, and he diagnosed your disease,
and he said, now you have deadly, life-ending cancer, and you get
despondent, a feeling of just remorse and sorrow comes over
you, You see that you're dying, and in your mind, you can't do
anything about it. You cannot heal yourself. You're
not a doctor. You don't have the cure, if there
is a cure. But then, the doctor makes a statement. He says, but
your cancer is curable. Your ears perk up. He's speaking
things that you hear that mean something to you. Now you're
interested. You reach out and say, doctor,
give me that cure. And that's the way it is with
the gospel when God gives you ears to hear. You see, you're
a sinner. You cannot save yourself. You
don't deserve salvation and you cannot earn salvation. The only
thing you deserve and the only thing you've earned is death
and damnation. But the preacher comes along
with the message of grace and says, there's a cure, there's
salvation. Now perk up your ears and listen,
I'm going to tell you where it is. And it's in Christ and Him
crucified. It's in the grace of God. For
by grace are you saved. Through faith. But that's not
of yourselves. It's the gift of God. It's not
of works, lest any man should boast. Look to Christ, sinner. Look to the Lord. and be saved. That's what the scripture says.
God is a just God and a Savior. He can honor His holiness and
His justice and His righteousness while at the same time He can
be a loving, merciful, and gracious Father. And that's what happens
when you come into the light. You see the glory of Christ and
you see the assurance of salvation that's based upon all that He
accomplished at Calvary. When you come into the light,
you hear things that mean something. They're valuable to you. This
is a joyful sound. It's a sound of salvation that
you didn't hear before. And He gives you a heart to understand. The heart is the mind, the affections,
the will. He draws out your affections
to trust Christ and to love Him. Now, that's what He says. Now
are you light? And listen to what He says in
verse 8. Now are you light? in the Lord. There's no light
in us, there's no light in the world, there's no light in religion,
but there's light in the Lord, for He is the light. And this
is the light of Himself as His glory is manifested. He's the
fullness of the Godhead bodily. As we said, He's the God-man,
the one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
Book of Hebrews chapter 1 says he's the brightness or the effulgence
of the glory of God. If you want to see God, look
to Christ. And then the light of his word, his gospel, is light. It shows us things that we don't
see by nature. It shows us things that man cannot
show us. It shows us the way of salvation
by his grace. Now he says, walk as children
of light. In other words, you've been brought
into the light. You've been born again by the
Spirit. Now walk as children of light. Now what does that
mean? That means two things. Walk in the truth. That is, be
a walking manifestation of the truth of how God saves a sinner. Don't go around here bragging
and boasting as if you earned salvation. That's not walking
as a child of light. The person who walks like that
is walking as a child of darkness. When you walk as a child of light,
you walk in humility, knowing that you haven't earned salvation,
none of it, and you don't deserve it. That you're a mercy beggar,
as one man put it. You're a sinner saved by the
grace of God. You're not here to promote yourself,
you're here to promote Christ. You're not here to exalt yourself,
you're here to exalt Christ. And you do this in your doctrine,
the doctrine of God. the doctrine of the Scriptures.
That's why we must stick to the Word of God if we're going to
walk as children of light. We can go to the opinions of
men, we can go to the philosophies of men, we can go to the ideas
of men, but that's not light. There's only light in the Word
of God. This is the light. David said,
thy word is a lamp unto my feet. And so we testify In other words,
our testimony is not what we've done for God, but what He's done
for us in Christ. Paul wrote in Galatians 6 and
verse 14, God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And then, secondly, we walk as
children of light when we walk in obedience to the Word of God. A person who says, well, since
salvation is by grace, therefore I don't have to be obedient,
I can go out here and sin as much as I want to, is not walking
as a child of light. He's walking as a child of darkness.
And that kind of testimony reveals the absence of grace. You see,
grace is not just something we hear. Grace is not just something
we say. Grace is not just something we
agree with. Grace is something we live. So
we live as children of life seeking to be conformed to Christ, seeking
to love as He loved, seeking to obey as He obeyed, seeking
to honor our Heavenly Father and our dear Savior by our testimony,
our actions, our attitudes, our words, our relationship with
people. This is how we're to do it. Now,
notice he says, walk as children. Now that tells us this, we're
not to walk in order to become children. but we're to walk because
we already are children. It's just like a person who's
born physically. They learn to walk as they grow.
In other words, they don't start walking in order to be created
or to be born. That'd be impossible. That's
putting, as somebody said, the cart before the horse. They're
given life, and they are born, and then they grow, and they
begin to walk. Well, it's the same way spiritually. We walk
as children of life because God, sovereignly, through His Spirit,
from His Son, has given us life, and then we're born again by
the Spirit of God, and then we walk because we already are His
children. And that's a key point, because
that establishes the motive of our walk. You see, in this thing
of obedience, in this thing of honoring God, in this thing of
walking, the motive is everything. If you're walking, if you're
seeking to obey the Word of God in order to be saved, that's
darkness. That's works religion, you see.
That's not grace. That's not a child of life. If
you're walking or trying to be obedient in order to earn your
rewards in heaven, that is not grace, my friend. Now hear me
well on this because a lot of people are confused here. Believers
are not saved by grace and then earn their rewards by their works.
That is not so. You see, everything in salvation,
everything in the life and the walk of a believer is grace,
grace, grace. At no time can I earn my reward
from God. Christ is my reward. Heaven is
my reward. And He earned it. Earned it all. And I know what preachers will
tell you about that, but that's not so. Now listen to me. The
walk of a child is to walk as a child who has been made so
by the grace of God. So if you're trying to be obedient
in order to earn your position in heaven, then my friend, you're
not walking as a child of light. You're still walking as a child
of darkness. First of all, now let me tell you something. Salvation
is for sinners who don't deserve what they get. Christ is the
one who earned it, and when God saves a sinner, no matter who
they are, we're all equally saved, equally justified, equally entitled
to heaven's glory, and it's an inheritance, the Scripture says.
We don't earn an inheritance, somebody else earns it, and they
die, and they bequeath it to us. Well, Christ is the testator
of the covenant. He earned it, he died, and he
bequeathed it to his people, and he sovereignly dispenses
it to them. So Paul, he brings out a parenthesis
here in verse 9. He says, for the fruit of the
Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Now
let me say a few words about this. First of all, he mentions
the fruit of the Spirit. Paul spoke of the fruit of the
Spirit over in Galatians chapter 5. And he mentions several things. He mentions love, he mentions
faithfulness, he mentions all the things that the Spirit of
God inspires and implants within the hearts of God's people. And
he says, the Holy Spirit, when you're born again, he plants
within your heart all goodness. Now, where do we find all goodness?
Well, we don't find it within ourselves, we find it in Christ.
Christ said that the rich young ruler, there's none good but
God. Speaking of himself too, the rich young ruler called him
good, but he didn't believe that Christ was God, that Jesus of
Nazareth was God. So Christ said, well, why do
you call me good then? Well, we find all goodness in
Christ. Now we walk in him. And that's
the goodness that God gives us and implants within our hearts.
And then he says it's all righteousness. Well, where do we find righteousness?
We find it in Christ. And so we follow Him. And that's
what the Holy Spirit implants in our hearts so that we can
walk as children of light. We need righteousness in order
to be accepted before God. Where am I going to find righteousness?
My best efforts still fall short. even as a born-again sinner,
a born-again believer, even as a child of God, my best efforts
to love Him. Now listen, let me say this,
I should put out my best efforts to love God, to love my neighbor,
to love my fellow brethren, but my best efforts to love in all
those areas still fall short of the standard. Now where am
I going to find perfect righteousness? I'm going to find it in Christ.
And that's what the Holy Spirit leads me to. That's who the Holy
Spirit leads me to. And then he says, the fruit of
the Spirit is in all truth. Now where am I going to find
truth? Well, I'm going to find that in Christ too. Now you say,
well you keep saying that. Well, another way of saying it
is what the Apostle Paul said in another place. He says, Christ
is all and in all. Christ is all, to the believer,
and He dwells within every one of His people, all of them equally
by His Spirit and by His Word, so that we walk as children of
life when we walk according to the Spirit in all goodness, in
all righteousness, and in all truth, as we rest in Christ,
rest in what He accomplished on Calvary, and as we seek to
follow Him whom to know is life eternal. Do you understand that?
That's what it is to be children of life. Anything less is darkness. And you certainly cannot add
anything to Christ, because to add anything to Him is to deny
Him. Paul said that in Galatians chapter
5. He said, Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made you free, and don't be entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Salvation is not Christ plus, it's Christ alone and what He
accomplished. You see what I'm saying, my friend?
Your only hope My only hope is to come to Him. It's to trust
Him alone for all goodness, all righteousness, all truth. There's
no other way. Walk as children of light. And
those who are still in darkness, listen to what I'm saying. Don't
remain in darkness. I know it takes the Word of God
and the power of God, but don't remain there anymore. Look to
Christ. I hope this message has been
helpful to your understanding of the Scriptures. And if you'd
like to get a copy of this message, listen to the announcer as he
gives you the details. The title of this message is
Children of Life. And I hope you'll join us next
week for another message from God's Word.